Tour gear rated

C'est indispensable

I want to take a moment to mention some pieces of gear that distinguished themselves one way or another on this trip:

20" Paiste Sound Formula Full Ride with six rivets
This cymbal subs for my 22" 602 Dark Ride, and it turned out really nice. Since their sound from cymbal to cymbal is pretty consistent, and you can get them cheaply on eBay, I would not have been crushed if it had gotten stolen or lost, as I would've been with the 602. I highly recommend using a 20" when flying— my cymbal bag fit into the overhead bins on every leg of our trip. When I was schlepping a 22" I would have to sweet-talk a flight attendant into putting it in with the garment bags, risking them forcing me to check it if they didn't feel like helping me with it. Read my earlier semi-full review of this cymbal.

20" Sabian Jack Dejohnette Ride (original line)
Using two medium-weight 20" rides was a pretty unusual choice for me, but it worked well. This very dry cymbal is a nice contrast to the long and lush Paiste, and it has been working really well for me on the left side, especially when playing softer. It responds much like a drum, and has a nicely finished, clean sound when used with drums that are also pretty dry. One instance where it failed utterly was at Café Belga in Brussels— a large room that tends to have listeners close to the band and a lot of talkers in the back. There this cymbal just died.

Sonor drums - 70's, 9 or 10 ply mahogany Phonic line, I think. 12", 14", 18"
Loaned to me by a great Brussels drummer, Teun Verbruggen. These are some of the best drums I've ever played. Sounded great tuned low in the studio and on our one rock gig, and on all of the jazz gigs as well. I would love to get a set of these if I could find one for less than $3000. Hardware is typical Sonor overkill, with the plate for the tom mount weighing ~5 pounds by itself, otherwise they're not ridiculously heavy.

Sabian cymbal bag
Their heaviest-duty bag. Or their most expensive, anyway. This is the same one I had to sew up on my own because it was falling apart after a couple of years. It (and my sewing job) survived the trip, despite being jammed on flying days with two medium 20's, 16 and 18" crash cymbals, hihats, my stick bag, and my snare drum stand.

Chop Busters by Ron Fink
This is the one book I took along for grabbing a few minutes of pad practice here and there, a purpose for which it is extremely well suited. Read my original review for it here.

Some essential non-musical items after the break:

Sewing day

Backstitch — makes a strong seam

[UPDATE: My sewing job survived the tour, despite being tested fairly extremely; I had to lighten my rolling duffle before checking it, and put my snare drum stand (a lightweight Pearl) in the pouch along with my stick bag when flying to and from Portland.]

Has anyone else noticed that the quality of drum bags of late has gone— how shall I put this— straight into the crapper, somewhat?  I have a Sabian cymbal bag, a Beato stick bag, and a Tuxedo bass drum bag which have all begun to fall apart way too fast— that bass drum bag actually arrived in the mail with the lining already undone, and I didn't feel like hassling with the returning it. The others have lasted a little longer— the Sabian bag survived the warranty period, just, only to have the fabric on the pocket begin to unravel at both corners:

I'm sorry to report that Sabian's customer service department was a lot more effective at enforcing their 1-year warranty than they were making me happy. I did manage to get a phone number, and possibly could have browbeat them into replacing it for me— usually it takes talking to someone in person, and being coolly persistent, even after they've given you several unequivocal noes— but again, I just didn't feel like hassling with it. 

So I got out ye olde needle and thread and sewed the damn thing up. If you have any bags in a similar condition, start by very carefully cauterizing the fraying edge of the nylon with a match, burning off the loose threads back to the good fabric without melting the whole bag. The stitch I used is a backstitch, which you can see illustrated above; apparently it's good for this application. I'll let you know how it holds up.

For the record, I've found Beato's products in general to be excellent; I've been using their mid-range drum bags and stand case for several years, and they've held up well— the stand case especially, as it has seen the hardest use. The stick bag just had the flap on the pocket come undone, which I've sown up— what's notable is that it's the second bag of that model I've owned which has done that.

Sabian Raw Ride in action

I finally got to record with the 22" Sabian Raw Ride I was so excited tell you about awhile back. I'd say it has an unmistakable "A" sound- neutral-seeming, but very pretty, with a lot of definition, though it's not a super dry cymbal; as I mentioned before, the wash seems to be in much lower frequency range than the stick sound. The rivets are nice, since it's not a real complex-sounding cymbal by itself. For comparison, the cymbal you hear during the fade in, and again at around 1:27 is my 22" Bosphorus Turk Original Ride, which is close to the same weight as the Sabian- maybe slightly heavier. The hihats are 13" Bosphorus Turk Regulars.



This is off of my new record of the music of Ornette Coleman, Little Played Little Bird, which will be coming out on Origin Records in 2012. You can pre-order is from the sidebar under the "help keep us operating" heading. Personnel is Tim Willcox on soprano saxophone, Weber Iago on piano, Bill Athens on bass, me on drums.

Still loving Sabian AA's

I continue to be very impressed and excited by what Sabian is doing with their AA line. I've long felt the A. line of Zildjian cymbals- and by association, the AA's- to be in decline, with product development stagnating and the quality of the cymbals as musical instruments going a little bit to hell- I haven't made a systematic study of this, I've just come across many too-heavy, bright, and unrefined examples in the past 20+ years.

The addition of Zildjian's A Custom line did little to change that impression, though I have come across a few better cymbals. I had heard and played fewer Sabians, but since the manufacturing process is similar, I lumped them in with the A.'s.

No more- the first Sabian AA that got my attention a few years ago was the fast and very mellow El Sabor crash. More recently I picked up a Raw ride, after seeing them at Cymbalsonly.com, and I love it- thin, somewhat dry, and incredibly musical. Then just this week a student picked up one of the new Memphis rides, and I'm blown away even further. This is the perfect medium ride- an old fashioned medium- that is to say, lighter than has been standard since about the 80's. The pitch is high, with nice definition and a lovely harmonious cushion underneath- the sound made me think of the slamming bar bands of the 70's. I actually can't give you a detailed review because I was only able to play it for a few moments in a lesson, but it made a tremendous impression- I wanted to own one instantly.

All of these cymbals all have the classic A. sound- which I can't describe for you; you just have to have heard and played a lot of them- but much more refined than in the past, and much more controllable dynamically. These don't have the darkness or complexity of the hand-hammered K-types, but are fully their equal as musical instruments- using my Raw ride in a jazz setting is no compromise. Think Irish whiskey or a great British session beer compared to Scotch or a Trappist ale. I'm very eager to play another one of these, and to see what else Sabian is up to.

There are a number of YouTube clips of varying sound quality demonstrating this cymbal- one of the better ones is after the break. But I'd really recommend seeking one out and playing it.

Sabian AA's are amazing

I just received my 22" Sabian AA Raw Ride (purchased blind on Ebay) in the mail the other day, and continue to be really impressed by the quality of  the AA's- these beautifully refined-sounding cymbals keep coming up.

Since they were introduced in the mid-80's, Sabian AA's have been roughly equivalent to A. Zildjians, which for anyone coming of age in the 70's and 80's were the classic cymbal sound- I lack the vocabulary to describe it, but the envelope is instantly recognizable to anyone of that era. While the Zildjians seem to have declined somewhat- I can't remember hearing a really nice one in a long time, and they seem to be making them heavier now- Sabian seems to be making real advances with the manufacture of this type of cymbal, taming their often-obnoxious brightness.

My unhammered and unlathed Raw ride looks a lot like the old Zildian Earth ride, but is a completely different thing. It's a jazz weight- a little lighter than my 2600+ gram Bosphorus Turk 22" Original (light) ride- and plays exactly like a jazz cymbal. The sound is very mellowed-out classic A, much like some of the thinner A's from the 1950's. You expect this type of cymbal to be very dry, but mine has a lovely, harmonious low cushion of sound under it, almost like an organ drone. I love the bell sound: clear, but not harsh- in fact, it's hard to get any kind of obnoxious sound out of this cymbal- even riding on it with the butt of my SD11's works. It gives a nice balanced, controlled, but explosive crash. It's well-suited to acoustic music, but would likely not work in situations requiring a cutting sound, or a sustained strong riding. Mine has six rivets installed, which livens up the sound, but I'm not sure this is the ideal sizzle cymbal- catching it with a brush does not give that nice long tone I want from that type.

The price is also nice, costing (on sites like Cymbalsonly.com) $75-100+ less than the K-type cymbals it is actually classed with.

Fulfilling the same role, the Sabian Raw ride is an excellent, lower-cost alternative to the generally darker and more idiosyncratic hand-hammered cymbals. Highly recommended, and I'm going to be keeping an eye on other AA's.

UPDATE: After using it on a couple of gigs (one very low volume), I'm more enthusiastic about this cymbal than ever- it's like a much kinder, mellower version of the circa 1970 A. Zildjian medium ride rivet cymbal I used for many years. In practice it actually works just fine as a sizzle cymbal, though not precisely ideal- I prefer a slightly heavier cymbal for that.